Another far right outing

By Saul Landau

I laughed when 61-year-old Baptist minister George Alan Rekers got outed after his most excellent European vacation with a 20-year-old travel partner from Rentboy.com. “Anti-Gay Activist Cavorts With Male Hooker,” the headline might have read.

Rekers, 1983 co-creator with Reverend James Dobson of the Family Research Council, denounced homosexuality as a sin, and advocated conversion-therapy. He says he tried to convert the rented “Lucien” (real name: Jo-Vanni Roman, 20, who advertised the size of his member) to straighthood.

Claiming post-surgery back problems, Rekers supposedly needed a Rentboy to lift his luggage. On April 13, however, a Miami New Times reporter photographed Rekers lifting his own suitcases at the Miami International Airport baggage claim while his handsome companion looked on.

Rekers claimed he didn’t know “his traveling companion’s profession when he hired him to accompany him on a 10-day European vacation… to help him carry luggage.”

“Lucien” appears on a website “devoted to connecting gay escorts with clients.” Rekers claimed he “counseled the lad on methods of curing gayness, and the importance of becoming a Christian.”

The Rentboy told CNN’s Randi Kaye he received “$75 a day plus expenses to travel with him [Rekers] for two weeks in April to London and Madrid.” His services included daily nude “sexual” massages to Rekers who, Rentboy says, loved the naked touching, but showed no interest in sex.

Ultra right Family Research Council members, who Rekers helped incorporate in 1983, removed references to him from their website. Rekers’ “expertise” on gay issues brought him a $140,000 fee for testifying in favor of Florida’s gay-adoption ban. (http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/08/1619272/rentboy-escort-i-gave-sexual-massages.html#ixzz0oIT8hUzs)

In 2006, Reverend Ted Haggard also got outed and then ousted by The Board of Directors of the National Association of Evangelicals (30 million people), when the media revealed Teddy had engaged in the very satanic vices he had condemned in his sermons.

A gay drug-dealing hooker said Haggard had paid him for kinky activity including the use of naughty drugs. Haggard, previously featured in the documentary film, “Jesus Camp,” warned adoring young Christians: “We don’t have to debate about what we should think about homosexual activity. It’s written in the Bible.”

Haggard got fired as preacher at the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, but not before he played a key role in turning out “the evangelical vote” for God’s candidate (Bush).

The married father of five confessed to his congregation: he was “guilty of sexual immorality.” Mike Jones, the masseuse, said Haggard had paid him for sex for more than three years. Mike also sold Ted crystal meth for “booty bumping,” or “keistering,” which Wikipedia described as anal drug-taking methods that increase “sexual pleasure.”

Unlike stodgier geezers, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and Rekers, the boyish Haggard related to young Jesus adorers. Like Elmer Gantry, however, Haggard, when caught acting in the very ways he had described as sinful, took the slithering mode of escape. He did a “Bill Clinton”: “I did not have sex with that man – just routine massage.” He admitted to buying, but denied using, methamphetamines. Sure, he just got a massage — of his you know what by someone else’s sphincter — or visa versa.

Haggard used his enthusiasm for the pure Christian life to convert young people. Hopefully, they have since absorbed from his “outing” an important lesson on true Christian principles. Haggard took two weeks of Christian cure and is now normal – according to him – and counsels others who have strayed as he did.

In August 2007, the pious and devoutly anti-homosexual Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig got busted for playing footsie with an undercover cop in the toilet stalls at the Minneapolis airport.

Pathetic and hypocritical? Reverends and Senator stood for heterosexuality uber alles and for using Christ to cure those who suffered from the homosexual disease. Did they so loathe their inability to exert power over their most loathsome impulse that they then projected self-hatred toward others with similar impulses?

The far right’s quest for power relies on convincing its public of its candidates’ noble Christian principles. “Family values” conjure visions of a happy and prosperous parents attending church with smiling, obedient children who practice abstinence, join the armed forces, serve their country, sing the national anthem and salute the flag.

Family values also means converting homosexuals; not letting them marry or adopt. Problems arise when the these apostles of virtue emerge as kinky-winkies, like millions of just plain “sinners.”

In mid May, another abstinence promoting member of Congress — now ex Congressman Mark Souder (R-IN) — got caught shtupping a staffer. Bad image, said Minority leader John Boehner. Souder resigned, blaming Washington for his transgression “against God, my wife and my family.” Like Haggard, he will undergo a quick Christian cure and get forgiven.

God who judges me harshly uses different standards for forgiving true Republican believers!

Saul Landau, an admitted sinner, is also an Institute for Policy Studies fellow.